Our correspondent throws himself into the beer-soaked festivities, and hopes
to dodge flying knives this year

In the more excitable lifestyle sections of some websites, you might have read about how Britain is currently “gearing up for Pancake Day”, but I quibble with turns of phrase that imply anything more by way of preparation than buying flour.

Why? Because if there is any country that has to get into gear for Shrove Tuesday, it’s Germany, as I found out when living in Düsseldorf a few years ago – and as I remember every year when, digging out my fancy dress, I head back to join in the celebrations.

Celebrations? While you might associate carnival more with Rio and Venice than the Rhineland, it is actually this part of Germany which has, by some measures, the largest in the world: in an average year, well over a million people turn out to watch the main Karneval parade in Cologne (slightly more than the actual population).

Carnivals are hugely popular in Rhineland cities such as Düsseldorf Photo: Getty

In other Rhenish cities such as Mainz, Bonn – and of course Düsseldorf – carnivals of similar proportions are put on, and countless towns across Catholic areas of Germany have their own traditions going back hundreds of years.

Most such customs have their roots in the role reversal required every now and then to keep feudal societies running: oppressed women, downtrodden peasants, and weary townsfolk across Christendom once longed for Shrovetide

Most such customs have their roots in the role reversal required every now and then to keep feudal societies running: oppressed women, downtrodden peasants, and weary townsfolk across Christendom once longed for Shrovetide, a brief period in which those at the bottom of the social scale could pretend to be at the top and social conventions were put on hiatus.

Yet while in Britain this cultural context practically disappeared with the monasteries, many regions of Germany remained under more or less authoritarian rule through to 1949, meaning that Karneval functioned as a necessary release valve through into the 1950s.

Even if it has lost this justification now, the remnants are clear to see. To this day, celebrations start on the Thursday before Lenten week with Weiberfastnacht, or “Wenches’ Carnival” (this year on February 4). As a symbolic relic of the fact that this was once the only occasion on which women were allowed to gather without their menfolk, costumed “wenches” storm Düsseldorf’s town hall, acquiring the keys to the city for the day.

A carnival princess waves a symbolic town hall key during the 2014 carnival in Bonn Photo: Getty

In an anti-patriarchal ritual too painful to be analysed further, men caught wearing ties have them cut off by gaggles of tipsy ladies

In a further anti-patriarchal ritual too painful to be analysed further, men caught wearing ties have them cut off by gaggles of tipsy ladies roaming the city centres from around 10am onwards (lax German licensing laws and non-enforcement of drinking bans on public transport are conducive to early intoxication). Generally, the girls demand a kiss from the offender, too.

From here on in, life essentially grinds to a halt until Ash Wednesday. The weekend is the year’s busiest for the cities’ pubs as revellers whose bosses won’t let them have time off get their drinking done early – and those whose bosses are (wisely) closing for Karneval warm up for the big day: Rosenmontag, or Rose Monday (Feb 8 2016).

Bavaria's State Premier Horst Seehofer did not look too concerned about losing his tie during the Weiberfastnacht in Munich in 2009 Photo: Getty

This is when, in another ritualised takeover of medieval origin, the committee of Narren (fools or jesters) behind the festivities boots out the mayor and installs a gaudily-regaled “royal couple” for the day.

At their command, the procession sets off through the Old Town, featuring drummers and dancers with batons and pompoms, satirical floats parodying politics – often in the crudest of visual terms – and trucks carrying the members of the Karneval associations (read: drinking societies) who bombard the crowd with sweets, small items of costume jewellery, and – in successful fund-raising years – some items of genuine usefulness.

Carnival floats, such as this one in 2012 featuring German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the then French President Nicolas Sarkozy, parody politics in the crudest of terms Photo: Getty

The assembled merrymakers try to attract the attention of those on board the floats, smiling suggestively and blowing kisses in efforts to get a really big load chucked their way. I’ve generally been adept at this thus far, but since having a small kitchen knife thrown at me – albeit packaged, and eminently useful – some years back, I’ve become more cautious.

The assembled merrymakers try to attract the attention of those on board the floats, smiling suggestively and blowing kisses. Since having a small kitchen knife thrown at me some years back, I’ve become more cautious

I’ve also become more circumspect about the random encounters that are the predictable outcome of several days of widespread all-day drinking in fancy dress (I’m in a relationship). However, many I know aren’t, and are, by the close of proceedings in the early hours of Shrove Tuesday, running out of fingers on which to count the various suggestive nurses, sexy bunnies, and pretty Princess Leias…

German social conventions are thrown to the wind: nobody buys tickets on public transport (and nobody would be on duty to check); no-one uses the polite Sie form of address under any circumstances; nobody turns down the offer of a drink – except, one hopes, those doctors and nurses who are not in costume, but on their way to a shift in hospitals stretched to crisis point.

Carnival pigs in front of Cologne cathedral during the festival of wild excess Photo: Getty

The whole thing is written off by otherwise strait-laced citizens as being the fault of the Jeck, a nifty Rhenish dialect word for that little devil on your shoulder who temporarily gains the upper hand. In a suitably Saturnalian act of scapegoating, Düsseldorf burns a dummy Jeck named “Hoppeditz” on Ash Wednesday as a kind of collective cleansing ritual and then goes cold turkey: many give up alcohol (and even adultery) for Lent.

While I am looking forward to this year’s celebrations as much as ever, I am concerned. The fact that the worst of the New Year’s Eve sexualised crime wave took place in Cologne will put the city’s carnival street parties into focus as a test for how deeply German society’s carefree, trusting attitude has been shaken.

My fond hope is therefore that Weiberfastnacht will see the women of the Rhineland out in fuller force than ever. And that the satirical floats will stay true to their merciless, incisive form. In my book, as long as Düsseldorf is still doing carnival, Germany is still doing fine.